Not Being the Hero
by brainchild
Summary: It wasn't easy, you know, not being the hero.


**Not Being the Hero**

It wasn't easy, you know, not being the hero.

Well, alright, Theodore Nott thought, it was a lot safer and filled with more free time, but there was something less gratifying about it, too. You had to be able to look yourself in the mirror everyday and not mind that you were average.

Not that Theo was average. No, he was smarter than everyone he knew. He got that from his parents—his brilliant father and quietly cunning mother, who'd told him when he was seven not to let anyone else ever make up his mind for him. They taught him that intelligence was a gift and weapon, razor-edged and tipped in poison. They taught him that silence is more powerful than most words.

Silence forced people to draw their own conclusions, with only a fourth of the facts:

Theo's father was a Death Eater.

They assumed he would be one, too, because he never talked about it.

That amused him.

He knew exactly what and who he was, and he liked himself. And people that he wanted to usually liked him, too.

It was still hard not to notice Harry Potter and wonder sometimes (just once or twice) how their lives would have turned out if Potter's mother had lived.

Would she have had Theo's mum over for tea? Tried to make the boys play together? Would Harry be in Slytherin? (It had never occurred to Theo as realistic that he himself could have ever been in any other house. The snakes were challenging and twisting and interesting; he would have languished elsewhere. Harry, though-Theo had seen him scheme and plot and break rules and do all sorts of un-golden boy Gryffindor things. He could have been something great in Slytherin.)

"You're brooding," his best mate, Devon, said one December night, tilting her head. Her long brown hair flowed down against her cashmere sweater.

"I'm thinking," he corrected, drawing the word out as he traced the lines of his sofa chair with his nail.

That made her smile. "Is there a difference with you?"

If she weren't his closest friend, Theo would have crushed her with a glare.

"I owe Harry Potter a life debt," Theo said at length, his hand stilling on the fabric. "If he dies before I fulfill it, to whom would it fall?"

The question hadn't really been bothering him, but it would be nice to have an answer.

"I don't know," Devon said, resting her chin in her palm, propped up on the arm of her chair. "Not his relatives."

She said the last word with a sneer and taste of disgust. They were Muggles, after all, those people who raised the Boy-Who-Lived, and if the rumors at Hogwarts were anything to go by-and the rumors Theo heard usually were-Harry Potter's relations were not a very good sort.

"You would think he would hate Muggles the most with that for a family," Theo said, shaking his head and glancing at the window, "instead of championing their cause."

Devon, who was a year behind Theo and absurdly beautiful, shook her head. "Only if you had never met him."

Because Harry was always stubbornly fighting for other people-chasing down Rememberals and speaking to Luna Lovegood like she wasn't the weirdest person alive. Starting student rebellions in hidden rooms and running off to fight Dementors with nothing more than some gumption and his two best friends. Never accepting how much easier it would be to just not care. Or, at the very least, to care less. To let that fire and drive die down, just for an hour, just long enough to let someone else deal with whatever problem surfaced.

"Do you ever imagine that maybe he's just hiding in Hawaii?" Theo asked, smiling to himself at the image of the Golden Trio tanning while England believed they were on some heroic quest.

Devon smiled a bit sadly, making Theo wonder what she learned about Harry in their brief study sessions last year. "It's nice to imagine, at least, that he could rest."

Maybe if he were normal, instead of being so dreadfully important.

The clock in the corner of the room chimed softly eight times, and a house elf refilled both of their wine glasses.

"I'm going to go talk my father," Theo decided, standing as abruptly as he changed the subject.

"Oh, yes. That sounds like a marvelous plan," Devon said dryly, standing much more elegantly, though she was about a third his size and had consumed twice as much wine. Theo appreciated that about her. He appreciated most things about her, including the fact that she didn't mind non-sequiturs and would never have stopped him from actually going to have this conversation.

It was the Christmas holiday of his seventh year, and Theo had decided to go home for a plethora of reasons that stretched from enjoying the shock on his mother's face when he arrived to actually enjoying the feel of his own bed to knowing he would be left mostly alone to furthering the belief that he and his father were still very close. It helped in Slytherin to have a father in the Dark Lord's inner circle; it helped more to foster the myth that he cared about you.

So Theo walked Devon to the Floo, where he gave her a farewell kiss on the cheek.

"Owl me if you're disowned," she said with a wave.

His father's study smelled of wood and smoke and leather from the couch against the wall, where no one ever sat. The curtains were drawn and the night was already dark; the fairies in the garden moved like the ocean on a foul day. Out that window, beside the large oak tree that cast a shadow like a giant, there was a spot on the ground so black and dead that as a child, Theo threw things at it to see if they would die too. No one ever talked about what made the mark, but his mother grabbed his wrist once and dragged him away, explaining that some things were better off left alone.

When Theo turned to his father, he saw the man raise his eyebrow the exact way Theo did when someone thought to ask him about his allegiances.

"Hello, Theodore," his dad said, putting down the curling parchment on his polished desk. "Can I take this as an indication that you have moved beyond your brief rebellion?"

"If the Dark Lord ordered you to kill me, would you do it?" Theo asked, never one for idle chat, especially in his father's luxurious private study, where old, creaking books sat on shining shelves.

"You used to be good at pleasantries," Mr. Nott said, watching his son with a small tilt of his head. It was a mannerism Theo's mother shared.

"Pleasantries are for putting strangers and enemies at ease," Theo said.

Mr. Nott smiled. "You've always been a charming boy, haven't you?"

"You're avoiding the question."

Even before his father's pointed look, Theo was annoyed with himself for stating the obvious. He blamed it on the wine and took a sip from the glass—newly filled.

Sounding old and overconfident, Mr. Nott finally answered, "It's not a situation that will ever occur."

Theo said nothing, hoping to draw out the details. This method of using silence in conversation didn't work very well on his parents (it didn't work at all on his mother, who could go for days without speaking as if to prove a point about will power even as she completed the most mind-numbingly dull and frivolous tasks), but his dad didn't like for his son to be ignorant.

"You are my boon, Theodore," his dad said, leaning back against the leather seat. "The thing the Dark Lord holds in safety as a reward for my support, and threat of my desertion. My loyalty protects you."

"As Mr. Malfoy's protected Draco?" It was a sore spot, remembering the blonde boy crouched over on the floor of the Wrightman ballroom, screaming with pain.

"Lucius Malfoy failed publicly. I won't." Mr. Nott was an assured man.

"You could."

"If I did, I would die first. You would have warning." He said it as casually as Theo talked about creating a potion to convert mud into gold. It was a family trait, he supposed, that all three of them shared: an aversion to sounding impressed by anything.

"Comforting." More sips of wine, because honestly? This was a ridiculous conversation to have. "Especially considering I openly brought down a ward you created for the purpose of kidnapping and torturing a fellow classmate."

Mr. Nott's face grew tight. "Yes, that was rather difficult to explain."

Theo waited for that conversation to continue.

"But you were smart, as always," Mr. Nott said, eying his only child with something just short of pride. "You made sure everyone heard that you owed one of the imperiled a Life Debt. The Dark Lord acknowledged that."

'Acknowledged' wasn't the same as 'approved,' and Theo's father had always been quite careful with his words.

"My debt was not fulfilled."

"Of course not. Yours was a foolish plan, born, I suspect, of your affection for that girl." Mr. Nott never actually said Ginny's name in conversation, and his eyes sometimes grew thoughtful at mentioning her. Theo never asked why to avoid drawing attention to the fact that he knew Ginny was more important in this game than people suspected.

"Theodore, we are winning this war," Mr. Nott said, looking him straight in the eye for a long time, which was rare. He hated frankness as much as other people hated being poked in the face with a stick. "The government is ours. Gringott's is working with us. We control Hogwarts, and Dumbledore was killed by a man he'd been foolish enough to trust. There is no more resistance. There's almost no more war."

It was true. Mostly. Except for a band of students at Hogwarts led by Neville Longbottom, of all people, and a dark-haired boy name Harry, who was more of a myth than a reality these days. A myth of hope and foolishness who might be in tanning in Hawaii for all anyone heard about him, but was, most likely, giving up pieces of himself for this fight, just as he gave up school and friends and a girl who loved him enough to make a twin patronus.

But his father knew about those resistances, heard reports from the frustrated Carrows and the men whose entire job was to find the Boy-Who-Lived.

"Have you always expected me to join his followers?" Theo needed to know.

"I expected to end this war a decade ago and raise you in the new society we created in its wake," Mr. Nott said, smiling softly at the son he'd gotten so late in life. "But your mother was more careful than I."

His mother hedged her bets. It was why her dinner parties never had any true disasters, and why Theo's playmates were on constant rotation. It's why she let people think she was a dumb, pretty face, and why she had an extra wand in her purse that no one but Theo knew about.

"She insisted that you visit her family." Mr. Nott shook his head. "She has a knack for getting her way."

Theo had always assumed his mother didn't want him to know her Gryffindor/Ravenclaw family. That it had been his father-his History-Is-What-Guides-and-Breaks-Us Father-who had set up those playdates. (Actually, before he realized that his father terrified most people and his mother planned every detail of her life, he had suspected that his uncles had kidnapped him for a day without telling his parents.)

"Father," Theo said slowly, watching this man he lived with but did not really know, "do you want me to become a Death Eater?"

The silence twisted between them—between two generations and a hard oak desk.

"Yes," Mr. Nott said at last, meeting his son's eye. "Because what we're doing is right, and what we're preserving is good, and you know that."

Maybe. "I know a lot of people are dead."

And though Theo hadn't meant the words harshly, he could see the age and grief seep into his father's face between the cracks of resolve. The wrinkles by his mouth deepened, and his shrewd eyes grew hard, and not for the first time, Theo wondered for the first time what his father had given up for the fight he wanted Theo to inherit?

"They made the wrong choices," Mr. Nott said.

Theo hummed indifferently. "They fought for something they believed in. A noble ambition, you once told me."

"They didn't understand the consequences, the way the world was breaking," Mr. Nott said curtly, and Theo wondered how long ago his father had been brainwashed.

"They aren't torturing children."

"They're ruining the world for those children." The older man narrowed his eyes and shook his head. "He's a great man, the Dark Lord. He wants the world to be better, to restore our bygone honor, and he could do it. His charisma, his power- You can't imagine. You've never seen anything like it"

No, Theo probably hadn't. Because Headmaster Dumbledore's power was weakened by his unwillingness to use it. Professor Snape was too consumed with self-loathing to be charismatic, and his uncle Chad channeled his skills into nothing grander than healing. His mother had something there-something in her eyes that said she could bend others to her will, but she was uncomfortable with attention and wanted nothing of the power his father always sought.

Yet when Theo thought of power and charisma and that ability to move people, he remembered the way a boy in his year would not bend for Umbridge and refused to be quelled by Professor Snape. A boy who had walked right up to a snake in the middle of a duel and made it obey him, who yanked a Dementor's hand from Theo's ankle. He thought of Harry Potter and the way he walked back into the fight when he could have been safe like them, inside the castle. The way people like Luna Lovegood and Neville Longbottom and even Ginny Weasley would fly away on the backs of animals they couldn't see to fight for a cause just because it was his. He didn't even have to ask.

"What if I have?" Theo asked at last, a slow and steady question. "What if I want to follow someone else?"

Old Mr. Nott didn't seem to believe Theo, dismissively saying, "You are not a child any longer, and I am not a young man. You are allowed your own mistakes."

Was it a mistake, Theo wondered, to believe in Harry Potter? To not want to share a cause with the Carrows? Yes. According to everything he had been told his whole life, it was wrong.

"Did you make a mistake?" Theo was just brave enough to ask, here in the angry study well past dusk. "When you chose your allies?"

"No," his father said with such conviction that Theo knew he had to believe it. "Dumbledore spoke of morality and honor, but that side knows nothing of either. They don't live in the real world where we are being destroyed and the Muggles do not care. They are willfully forgetting and destroying their own history, Theo. You would have to be blind not to see the way they are—the machines they are building and the destruction they are reaping. They cannot be coddled and pitied. They are owed nothing. They are nothing."

"They're people." They were Tobias Leland and Hermione Granger, who may have been annoying but were still incredibly smart. They weren't going to just roll over, not the way his father thought they would.

"No more than a centaur is a person."

It didn't matter to Mr. Nott that the means to achieving his goals were murder and terror. It didn't matter that Hogwarts was an embarrassment or Diagon Alley was deserted. This was a fight of principles, the sort that Theo hated the most. The kind that did no good because stupid people would always be stupid, and trying to change their minds was an exercise in futility.

Still, if only for a moment, Theo wished he cared about something as much as his father cared about this, as much as Ginny cared about flying and Devon loved traveling, as much as Harry Potter burned for justice, and his uncle loved Healing. As he had once loved Saturday Quidditch games with his mother, when they had shared a warm blanket and matching hats pulled down over their ears, when they cheered so loudly that they couldn't hear the announcer yelling right along with them. The sheer thrill of caring for something enough that he would jump into his mum's arms with a brilliantly happy smile when they won, and sulk for days when they didn't. Before he started at Hogwarts, before his first Defense professor was possessed, before his father's friends grinned at the news that a girl had been kidnapped and taken to a secret chamber, before Theo held his grandfather's hand as he died too soon, before the tattoo on his father's arm bled black. Before his mother went quiet. Before losing Gertrude Wrightman. Before. Before. A thousand times before.

"Theo," Mr. Nott said, his careful serious eyes on his son, proud and sincere and old, "if you fought for the other side, I would kill you."

Before Theo learned that was true, and thought it was normal. "I know."

It wasn't easy at all, not being the hero. Not in a long time.


End file.
